Choice of photo printer?

[PRHumphrey]

I have a Kyocera FS-1020D mono laser for day-to-day printing, and it works very well with CUPS. I'd like to be able to print the occasional photo though, and that's the problem: what photo printer can withstand not being used for several months at a time? I have an HP D4260 inkjet but it's rubbish at this task: I've never yet got a clean print from it.

Can anyone suggest a decent printer?

[lok1950]

All colour printers have that problem it's the ink that dries out clogging the nozzles.A color laser based one would not but can you justify the expense

Enjoy the Choice

[Ram]

If printing that few a photos I just stick them on a usb pen and take them to the local chemist or photo shop and get them printed.

[PRHumphrey]

Thank you both.

I've been thinking of a colour laser, but are they good at photos? I don't mind spending a bit of money if I'm going to get good results.

Taking a few photos to the chemist is a good idea. I have an idea that the one in the village has stopped offering that service - I'll check.

Thanks again.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Colour lasers are pretty poor at photo-quality pictures, in my experience. They're OK for charts, graphs, diagrams and whatnot, but ask it to print complex photographs and you'll notice the quality... or lack thereof.

[guy]

I'd second the usb stick and local print house.

Lasers are not good at photo-real.

I have a 4-colour office inkject printer but don't use even four colours often enough - I have to print a test page every week just to stop the nozzles clogging, which is a bit wasteful really.

[nelz]

I've found the Tesco service pretty good, if you have a nearby branch with a photo shop. You send the photos through the web site so there's no waiting for the photos when you go to pick them up.

The quality is better than any reasonably priced printer too.

[Rhakios]

Or perhaps a dye sub printer like the Canon Selphy series. They don't use ink, so don't clog. I have used media that's a couple of years old without problems. The disadvantages are that getting a decent edge-to-edge print out of Linux box requires some fiddling about and both the ones I have seen are restricted to a maximum of 6x4 print size.
Also, I don't see anything past the 700 series listed on the CUPS compatibility page.

[PRHumphrey]

Thanks for further tips, gents. I'd forgotten about dye-sub printers. I've just ordered one from Amazon. I'll let you know if it gives me any trouble.

[Nuke]

You can avoid inkjet nozzles drying out by using it say once a week. Just print a test picture, that is what I do.

Guy made this suggestion too, but said it was wasteful. However the test picture does not have to be large (the CUPS test page perhaps) and if you are not printing very much anyway then the whole cartridge is likely to dry out before it runs out, even with test printing.

It also depends on the printer; I used to have an Epson which did a self-clean that seemed to blow out a teaspoonful of ink into a special receptacle every time it was turned on. Despite that the nozzles eventually clogged anyway. I now have an HP which does not do that. HP have the best support for Linux anyway.

In the case of HP printers, my cartridges time out on the date limit before they run out. I am currently still using a set which timed out a year ago but I did a hack that over-rode the timer and put two fingers up to HP - but that is another story.